Christopher Hogwood

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Alternative Title:
Christopher Jarvis Haley Hogwood

Christopher Hogwood, (Christopher Jarvis Haley Hogwood), British conductor, keyboardist, and scholar (born Sept. 10, 1941, Nottingham, Eng.—died Sept. 24, 2014, Cambridge, Eng.), founded the Academy of Ancient Music (1973; AAM) to discover and present Baroque (and later Classical) music in the “style and spirit” of the 17th and 18th centuries, as the composer intended it and contemporary audiences would have heard it. Hogwood attended Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he studied music and literature. In 1967 he cofounded (with music historian David Munrow) the Early Music Consort of London, with which Hogwood was associated until it disbanded in 1976 after Munrow’s suicide. The group was one of the strongest roots of the early music revival and gained some popular appeal with its sound track for the film Henry VIII and His Six Wives (1972). It produced several recordings and succeeded in bringing a wider audience to an appreciation of early music. Hogwood was dissatisfied, however, and established the AAM, with its emphasis on the authenticity of the instruments—valveless trumpets, strings made of gut, wooden flutes—and the pitch. Hogwood turned to original sources for the group’s performances, becoming along the way a highly respected music editor. He taught at the Royal Academy of Music (1992–2008), King’s College London (1992–96), the University of Cambridge (2002–08), and Gresham College, London (2010–14). Hogwood was appointed CBE in 1989.